O' Death
by Craving Nostalgia
Summary: After his Godfather died, Harry Potter wanted to understand death. Luna Lovegood dragged him to the Room of Requirement to do just that.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: Do I own Harry Potter? I wish!_

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That suffocating void in his chest was still there.

It had been there in the Hospital Wing, when he'd gone to visit Ron and Hermione. He had visited them to check up on how they were doing. Though also, secretly, he had hoped for comfort from their company. When the two turned out to be accompanied by Ginny, Neville and Luna, Harry had thought that they could _surely_ drown the icy gusts in the depths of his void with warmth. But as Ron taunting Umbridge with the mock of centaur hooves gave no amusement to Harry, he realized he was wrong.

After he'd left the Hospital Wing—being intercepted by an angered Malfoy (for his pathetic father being imprisoned) and his stupid cronies, a vindictive Snape and a kindly McGonagall, whose addition of Gryffindor points gave Harry no joy whatsoever, because of that damn void—he headed over to Hagrid's hut. Harry had been hoping that Hagrid could be what he was seeking, a gust of warmth in his cold, numb chest. A distraction from reality. It was no use.

So, Harry found himself sitting on the edge of the lake, watching the Giant Squid indulge in the sunlight by emerging every now and then from the shimmering depths. Being alone in his stifling dormitory had been maddening, deepening the void; upon leaving Hagrid's hut, Harry had glimpsed the lake shining under the sun, almost as if it were winking at him. His feet had moved on their own accord, and when he's sat down on the riverbank he had hoped that the suffocating void in his chest would be filled with the chirping birds, the trickling waterdrops from the squid breaking the lake's surface, the breeze murmuring reassuringly against his skin…

No such luck.

The void was as hollow and cold as ever. It would remain that way because Sirius was gone. _Dead._ As this reality slammed into his stomach yet again, Harry resisted the urge to bawl right there and then, right in front of the bloody Giant Squid and its carefree little life. Choking back his sobs, Harry swiped furiously at the tears prickling his eyes, threatening to spill.

Everyone had, much to Harry's relief, avoided topic of conversation regarding his late Godfather. He had no wish to speak about it. In fact, Harry wanted to forget about it. To be blissfully unaware, like when he hadn't even known of Sirius Black's existence. He felt a twinge of guilt when he wished he had never met Sirius in the first place, believed him to be a murderer, just so he wouldn't have to go through the pain of loosing him. As soon as he thought that, Harry banished it, disgusted at himself. But he had still _thought_ it and that only made the void deeper. A strangled cry of frustration escaped his throat.

"The pollen from flowers are actually unborn fairies trying to latch onto any surface possible to grow a new home before they are born. That's why they irritate your nose and throat." A dreamy voice drifted from behind him.

As soft as the voice was, it had broke Harry out of the dark depths of his confusion and made him jump so violently that he tumbled forwards—right into the shimmering lake. The water shattered around him like glass. His plunge being as brief as he could make it, Harry scrabbled at the blue for air, and then he clawed at the surface of the riverbank. A pale hand extended towards him. Grumbling, Harry took Luna Lovegood's hand and allowed her to help him get back onto land. Her expression was as infuriatingly serene as ever, save for the amused glisten in her eyes. It was then that Harry's glasses, that had been clinging onto him desperately for dear life, fell lopsided on his face. Blurry Luna and the hazy green world behind her were almost calming. Luna corrected the glasses on his eyes, and Harry blinked.

"What are you doing here, Luna?"

"I saw the Giant Squid and wanted to talk to it, but it was already conversing with you." Harry couldn't help it. He snorted. For the first time since Sirius' death, a surge of amusement coursed through his veins. Oh, how _refreshing_ it was, though it lasted only a nanosecond.

"Talk about what?" He found himself asking.

"Just small talk. Like, for example, how the Merpeople are faring." A half-hearted laugh weaselled its way out of Harry's lips.

"They're probably annoyed that I just fell into their home…" Initially it was supposed to be a joke. But then, Harry contemplated how it must be like and intruder breaking through the roof in the Muggle world. The comparison made him feel suddenly rather sheepish.

"They live at the bottom; a little splashing shouldn't be much of a bother." Luna airily dismissed his statement. The melody of Hogwarts' Grounds occupied the silence between the two. Harry cleared his throat as Luna's eyes scrutinized his face unabashedly.

"Well, I'll give you and the Giant Squid some alone time." Harry said, smiling a little. It wasn't forced, like every post-Sirius smile had been.

"You look like you need something, Harry." Her statement made Harry shift uncomfortably, turning his gaze from her to the sky above. An owl sailed by.

"I need to get rid of Voldemort before he continues to hurt more people." He ground out, ignoring the sudden icy gust in his void.

"No, that's not it," she said, as if solving a particularly difficult riddle. Chancing a glance at Luna, he noticed her pale eyebrows were furrowed in contemplation. "I suspect it has something to do with Sirius Black." Harry's blood ran cold. No-one but Dumbledore had dared talk about his late Godfather, and Harry had smashed all he could in his Headmaster's office when the old man had offered that he _knew what it felt like_. If Luna uttered those words, he would howl like a crazed baboon, race into the Forbidden Forest and dance stark naked for any dangerous creature to see.

"Well you suspect wrong." Harry told her firmly, before turning his back to her and heading to the castle. He really didn't fancy losing his mind, and when the idea of dancing naked in the Forbidden Forest crossed it, he knew his sanity was in a very worrying position indeed.

As he walked up the stone steps, his mind wandered to the deep void in his chest again. The void had always been there, since he was old enough to comprehend what his parents' death meant. After Cedric Diggory's death, the void gaped wider. Then with Sirius gone…Harry believed that if he were to drop a rock down his void he would never hear it drop at the bottom. The emptiness was threatening to engulf him, and it was driving him mad. Luna was only partially right: Harry did want something, but it wasn't only to do with Sirius.

As he headed to the staircases, Harry nearly yelped in shock when he realized Luna had been trailing him the entire time. Resisting the urge to yell, Harry took deep, calming breaths as he regarded her and her irritatingly serene expression. Those eyebrows weren't furrowed anymore, and she seemed undisturbed by her thoughts. Harry had a bad feeling she'd come to a conclusion, and a partially accurate one at that.

"I'm tired, Luna. I'm heading off to my dormitory." When she showed no sign of moving, he added, as an afterthought, "it's in the _Gryffindor_ tower, just in case you've forgotten."

"Oh, no, I haven't forgotten, Harry." She replied brightly, grabbing his hand and yanking him into a direction that was certainly _not_ Gryffindor tower.

"Luna—wha—where— _stop, Luna_!" A stream of spluttered words left Harry's mouth to deaf ears. Finally, she stopped outside an all too familiar corridor on the seventh floor, with the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy across from it. The room that they'd been using for Dumbledore's Army for this whole year.

"Why are we standing outside the Room of Requirement?" Harry questioned, feeling a sense of apprehension for whatever was formulating in the Ravenclaw's head.

" _You_ tell it that, Harry." Luna commanded dreamily.

" _What_?"

"What you need is imbedded very deep in your mind…the room can help you come to terms with what it is." Harry gaped at her. Could she _see_ the void?

Then, he eyed the wall. He walked up and down three times. Harry Potter knew what he wanted.

He wanted to fill the suffocating void in his chest.

He wanted to come to terms with death.

A large, oaken door appeared on the wall.


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: Ya'know, if I owned Harry Potter, I would never leave my keyboard alone. Suffice to say, the poor thing is safe as I most certainly don't own Harry Potter. Unfortunately._

 _A/N: JessicaLee22, thank you for the review, it was very flattering :) To all my readers, thanks for the faves and follows!_

 _I have an important announcement: I wish I had a Room of Requirement. That is all._

 _Enjoy!_

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For a few minutes, Harry just stared dumbly at the door. There was now a blizzard in his void—an indicator that he should just grab the damn doorknob. As the icy winds ripped at him inside, Harry realized he was _scared_. Which was ridiculous, because he'd always been tolerant to fear. He was a Gryffindor after all. So why wouldn't he just open the door? His hand twitched, but that was the only movement he made.

It was here that he speculated that facing death meant that he would have to see it all over again…and he really, _really_ had no intention of re-watching that fine line between living, and of not. Watching Sirius literally tumble into the land of the dead was still fresh in his mind, but what would be worse than living through that again, was to see his parents die. Instead of a distant memory of screams, it would be a fresh image flashing through his mind, day in, day out, till the day he met his own demise. Harry shuddered.

"What's the problem, Harry?" Luna's soft dreamy voice asked. Clenching his jaw, Harry shook his head slightly. The Ravenclaw was working him out like he was an intricate riddle, and it irked him slightly. Apparently, she was resistant to rejection, because she drifted right in front of his line of vision. Those eyebrows were furrowed again. Briefly, Harry thought this must be her concentrating tic…like when Hermione would stick her tongue out slightly from the corner of her lips, or when Ron's nose would wrinkle. Luna tilted her head to the side, humming.

"Your eyes get darker when you're scared." She commented.

"I'm not usually scared, Luna," Harry replied, frowning. Bloody Ravenclaw.

"You were when you thought Sirius Black was in danger…" She trailed off, smiling sadly. "And when he ended up _being_ in danger." Harry sucked in his breath, fists clenching. Momentarily he closed his eyes to block his sight of Luna. He cast his mind to some happy memories. When he found more family, when it turned out Siriu— _nope._ Imagining talking to his parents—bloody _hell!_ Leaving the Dursleys…that's it…Ron and Hermione…

There was a deep, rumbling growl that sounded suspiciously like thunder; a sudden gust of salty wind smacked into Harry. The Boy-Who-Lived jerked his eyes open in shock, trying to catch his breath as the sudden force howled at him. Luna was standing in the doorway, her hair whipping in pale graceful arcs—a strange contrast to the billowing grey clouds beyond her. Harry's jaw fell. An angry metallic sky glowered down at an equally riled, steely sea. Just inches from Luna's feet was a ragged stone ledge.

" _Luna_!" He snapped, miffed that she had literally opened the door to his fear. Her response was to beckon him forward with a wild hand, not looking once back at him. The hesitation was back. But then, at least the first thing he saw wasn't a body crumpling to the ground; if it had been he probably would have pelted to his dormitory and hid under the covers of his bed, or, more likely, fainted.

Cautiously, Harry shuffled forwards until he was next to her. Luna stepped onto the stone, and he followed suit. From here, he could see that the ledge was at least fifty feet above the snarling waves. They were standing on a cliff. Harry turned around; he yelped in surprise when a large tree trunk stared back at him.

"It's an oak tree!" From the corner of his eye, he could tell that she had mimicked his movement, and then informed him in a yell, the wind distorting her voice's dreaminess and making it sound wispy. "It's a symbol of strength, you know. And knowledge, and resistance." She added. Scowling at the tree, he then proceeded to round on Luna.

"I don't need to know what kind of _tree_ it is, nor do I give a ruddy arse about what it _symbolizes_ , I want the _door_ back!" He hollered as the wind whistled loudly…Harry was strangely reminded of Hogwarts Express. There was a slash of stark lightning in the midst of the grey. Luna only gave him an infuriatingly bright smile, the abrupt flash of white light making her already pale features look ghostly.

"Harry, you _asked_ the room to help you. It's not letting you out until you get what you want!" When her wispy words dissolved into Harry like the sickly foam did into the sea below, Harry felt his heart drop. Thunder grumbled. Letting out an animalistic cry, Harry glared at the gloomy sky above, fat raindrops smattering onto his glasses (though Hermione had charmed them years ago, so that the raindrops dissolved, and his vision remained clear). Then, he set to move around the oak tree—what he saw made him loose the strength in his legs. Giving up on trying to stand, Harry sunk to his knees. The cliff was in fact just a circular tower of rock, and barely big enough for the width of the tree. The oak's gnarly roots clung onto the jagged stone for dear life as the wood groaned ominously. Essentially, he was a grain of sand on the point of a pin, held above a large haystack

When he saw Luna sag beside him from his peripheral vision, Harry turned to look at her. Her soaked hair made Harry realize that he, too was drenched in a mixture of tangy raindrops and salty sea spray. When he'd entered, he had been damp from the lake, completely forgetting about his state, but now it was as if he had just been freshly plunged into water. In fact, he also happened to be _freezing._ The iciness clawing at his skin battled with the iciness that roared inside him.

…The void.

 _Oh_.

Letting out an indignant cackle, Harry watched as Luna raised a curious eyebrow.

"This _is_ the void," he muttered, looking at Luna but suddenly not really seeing her. All his mind was doing was fumbling to gather that damned feeling the void gave him and comparing this to the feeling the room was giving him. Cold. Numb. Hollow. In conclusion, they were the exact same feeling. But what did the _tree_ represent? Luna had said…something about strength, if he recalled. Resistance? To what? _Death_? A pale hand grabbing his arm jerked him out of his thoughts.

"What did you say?" The wispy voice of Luna called. It was then that Harry realized they were in a howling storm, and his words were lost to the desperate howls that bashed the sea, the tree, and the two pinpricks of people. He also noted that whilst Luna certainly had her suspicions (damn Ravenclaw), she didn't have confirmations about the void, about his request to the room. Considering that she was also stuck in Harry's insides—he cringed at the thought, as taken out of context it sounded like some sort of freaky sci-fi film—he deemed she deserved to know why.

So he told her everything. Or rather, he yelled to her everything.

How the void had emerged with death's first greeting to Harry's life.

How it got deeper.

More bitterly, bitingly cold.

Then, with Sirius—

It felt as if it were infinite, the void.

When he finished, Luna's brows were furrowed, as he'd come to expect. Yet, now, there was a new feature on her face; the glazes on her eyes weren't dreamy, they were much too hard to be dreamy. Hard, but the glazes trembled over her irises. Harry would be half-tempted to consider them tears, had they not disappeared and melted into back to the familiar, dreamy glazes. It was a disconcerting show for him, to say the least, because he simply had no idea what to make of it.

"This tree, this rock—it's your _denial_ , Harry!" She finally hooted. "You don't know how to accept death, because you don't understand it. So you need to do what my Father's favourite Muggle saying says: take a leap of faith!" And before Harry could even digest what she said, Luna Lovegood sprung up from her kneeling position and dove off the ragged rock.

With a cry of surprise, Harry scrabbled to the edge, peering desperately down from where she had leaped. As she approached the aggressive expanse of grey, Harry whipped his wand out.

" _Arresto Momentum!_ " To his horror, Luna didn't stop falling. He frantically cast the spell again, and again, and again—until she was engulfed by a ravenous wave. Mouth open, Harry waited to see a dot of white in the steely grey. It never came.

"LUNA!"

Nothing.

Gripping his wand tightly, Harry felt his throat tighten. If there was one thing he hated, it was feeling helpless to anything, anything at all. Like when he thought Sirius was in Voldemort's clutches. Harry had found out a way to do something, but fat chance if that helped anyone. Yeah, the Ministry finally got their heads out of their arses, they realized Voldemort was back. It wasn't worth it, considering Sirius was _dead_.

But then, he had finally shown the Wizarding World he wasn't a liar. They could now prepare against Voldemort. Sirius' death would hopefully not be followed by many others, now that everyone's defences were arising. If Harry hadn't been tricked by the evil bastard, they would all still be unaware of Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Yet now, there would be no more of being hunted in the dark; no, they would put up a fight against the darkness.

Perhaps it _was_ worth it, because he _did_ end up helping people.

It wasn't like he was exactly helpless here, either…he could do something: he could take a leap of faith.

Just like Luna said.


End file.
